The Crow
by Beloved-Stranger
Summary: Heaven's nice...but its not real and Jo's through with pale imitations. Hunted by angels, helped by the dead, she traverses the stars trying to get back home. On earth, Dean gets ready to say yes, only to discover its not that simple anymore... Post 5x16
1. Fake

**Disclaimer:** No ownage.

**Author's Note:** Okay, this? This is a _drabble series_. This is _not the creation of a new 'verse_. I've got three of those already and they're quite enough. This is just me taking some time off and indulging...actually its a plot bunny that clamped onto my leg, refused to let go and is even now threatening to consume my left ankle.

But, whatever. No verse! Once this is done, its done. Done I tell you!

Enjoy.

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**1.**

Heaven's nice.

Which is the point, clearly, but Jo has always thought Heaven's supposed to be…spectacular. It could be looking the gift horse in the mouth, but do they really think she's going to settle for 'nice' when they've been advertising 'spectacular' for the past few millennia or so?

It isn't even that she isn't happy with what she's been given. What she's been given is amazing, takes her breath away every artificial morning and warms the cockles of her heart every artificial night.

She sees her Dad every Sunday when he and Mom visit for dinner and Jo makes a point of stopping by the Roadhouse whenever she's in the neighborhood. The kids stay with them when she and Dean have a hunt or need some alone time. Ash is always there, either sleeping on his favorite pool table or teaching her eldest daughter how to count cards. Bobby calls everyday, and she quietly glories in the sound of him tromping about in those old boots of his. Sam's in and out all the time, bringing news that never changes and dragging Dean off for some brotherly bonding, the pair of them smiling over their shoulders at her as they head off out the door.

Each night she curls up with Dean, her breath mingling warmly with his, mapping his heartbeat with ears and hands and love, knowing nothing will ever hurt her again, or hurt her children or her husband or her parents or friends.

It's nice. It's safe. It's so very, very fake.

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**AN:** Who wants more?


	2. Ash

**2.**

The first thing that clues her in is the sight of someone unfamiliar on her front doorstep.

No one new ever comes into this happy little bubble of hers, that's the way it works. Oh, there's been the occasional angel wearing a half familiar face, pretending to be a salesman or a meter reader or a visiting hunter. But she always recognizes the costumes they wear from somewhere in her life, and even if they don't know it, she always recognizes them for what they are; keepers checking up on the animals.

The second thing is the _lucha libre_ mask.

"Subtle," Jo mutters, watching the visitor from the upstairs bay window. "Real subtle, dude." She sighs and tromps downstairs, calling "Coming!" at the second volley of knocking.

When she swings the door open, the masked man puts one finger to his lips and says, "Shuuush!" before swirling his gold cape and bowling past her into her living room. Jo follows him, puzzled and curious.

He inspects the room cautiously, then announces, "Jo, it's me!" with suitable dramatic flare.

Jo raises her eyebrows at him.

"It's me!" he insists, as if that makes it any clearer. Then adds, "c'mon, Jo-glow! They put your brain in a jar when they dragged you up here?"

She stares at him. "…Ash?"

He whips off the mask and grins at her, fluffing his mullet proudly.

"Dr. Badass is in, baby girl."


	3. Talk

**3.**

She leads him into the kitchen, remembering too late that it overlooks the back yard…

…where Dean is playing with their children, laughter drifting in through an open window.

Jo draws the blinds sharply, throwing shadows through the room, and turns away, folding her arms over her stomach and refusing to look at Ash.

When she gets up the nerve, he's half-smirking at her. "Knew you had it bad, Jo-glow…just didn't know you had it _that_ bad…"

She takes a breath and asks, "Why are you here, Ash?"

"Or more importantly, how did I get here?"

She looks a question at him and he grins.

"Lemme tell you 'bout Heaven, Jo. See, it's kinda like Disneyland, without the anti-Semitism…"

They talk for hours, and are never once disturbed or interrupted. After all, this is Jo's little snow-globe, nothing happens here that she doesn't want.

Ash tells her about his travels between bubbles, his encounters with the denizens of Heaven. He tells her how he did it, how he does it, how she can do it too.

He tells her about the Winchesters, and watches her face as she begins to think.

Cas told her a lot of things when she asked about this place. He told her about the garrisons and angel's grace and how it felt to fly. He told her because she'd asked, because it was their last night on earth, and she said it brought her comfort.

Now it makes her hollow, because this is all a lie and –

"I can't stay here, Ash."

"You got a plan, Jo-glow?"

The smile lights up her face, and she really does glow.

"You bet your ass I do."


	4. Goodbye

**4.**

Its doesn't mean anything, but she says goodbye to her husband that night.

He watches her putting on her coat with those lovely, easy-going eyes of his. She knows the exact number of freckles across his nose, and the mapping of color in both of his irises but she doesn't know how long she's been up here…

Its reason enough to leave, even though it might just break her heart.

"You'll be back by dinner?" he asks.

She lifts her hair free of the coat's collar and lets it settle about her shoulders. "Sure. It's just an errand. I'll be back before you know it."

He nods, smiles. Stands and kisses her. She kisses him back like he's air and she's suffocating because she doesn't know if she'll ever be able to do this again. She feels his hands tighten on her hips and falls in love with the shape of his hands all over again.

"You sure you gotta go?" he rumbles, and wow, she'd love to stay…

'But, baby, you're not real,' she reminds herself, and pulls away from him, keeping her smile firmly in place.

"Yeah," she says. "Yeah, I gotta go."


	5. Bones

**5.**

She steps down from her front porch, into the street, and looks both ways. Nothing but eerily bright starlight on the damp blacktop and the hush of a suburban block at night. Nothing lingering in the dark to harm her babies bundled up safe in bed behind her.

She sighs. They're not real. She's never had children and the lovely little illusions that call her 'mom' are just that; illusions.

She's ready for something real.

Jo hears the bark and looks left, sees a dark yellow shadow padding towards her down the street.

It's a retriever.

"Hey there," she croons.

He lopes up, bannered tail wagging and puts his face in her open hands. There's a collar round his neck, but no tags, just the word 'Bones' scratched into the old leather.

"Bones," she murmurs. "Hey, Bones."

He whines and leans against her leg. She rubs a comforting hand over his ears.

"Who do you belong to?" she asks him. "Whose Heaven are you from, huh?"

"Sam Winchester's, as far as I can tell."

Jo looks up. The front door of one of the silent houses across the street stands open, light and cheering and music pouring from it, like there's a concert going on in the living room, though all the windows are dark and quiet as the grave.

The smiling woman standing by the open door is tall and handsome, all Catherine Zeta-Jones curves and glorious Selma Heyak hair. She's dressed like a biker, in black jeans and an band tee, and her boots make muted 'clumps' as she closes the door behind her, cutting off the rock concert roar.

"How _can_ you tell?" Jo asks, genuinely curious.

The woman's smile widens and she holds out a hand. "Pamela Barnes, psychic," she says.

Jo smiles back and takes her hand. "Jo Harvelle –"

"The girl who doesn't like Heaven," Pam finishes, and Jo's smile become rueful.

"It's not really that," she says softly. "It's wonderful. It just doesn't feel right."

Pam nods. At their feet, Bones lets out a soft bark and Jo strokes his ears again.

"He's really from Sam's Heaven?"

"Yup. Funny thing though…he and that dog really must have bonded. You don't see many animal souls up this far."

Jo stares at Pam and then at Bones, who looks back at her with big brown eyes.

"Wait, he's…he's not just a memory? He's a real dog?"

Pam's smile graduates into a grin. "Bones-a-fide."

"Huh." She looks down at the retriever with renewed affection. "Good dogs _do_ go to Heaven," she murmurs.

"Come on," Pam says. "I'm your guide, and we've got a quite a way to go."

Jo whistles for Bones, who trots happily at her heels, and they both follow Pam down the Axis Mundi. The hollow houses of Jo's little patch of suburbia peter out after a single mile, becoming fields of sun-gold grass that whispers into the cool air.

Pam halts, turns to the left field.

"We're going off-road?" Jo murmurs.

"The angels will be watching the AM," Pam explains. "This way."

They step into the wilds of the Elysium Fields, and the swaying grass parts for them as they walk.

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**AN:** I love Bonesy. Who else loves Bonesy? Sing it!


	6. Stars

AN: Loves to all those who reviewed, you made my week.

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**6.**

The stars are different here. They move more swiftly, in a constant circular arc. In the swirl and blur and bleed of light, sometimes it's difficult to pick out constellations.

Jo shakes her head.

"What's up?"

She looks over at Pam. "Just this place. It's beautiful. I mean it surprises me everyday how much…but every time I think of home…"

"Its not surprising," Pam says easily.

"Its not?"

"Nope. You went before your time, Jo."

"…I…what?"

Pam smiles that slow-glow, whiskey smile. "When I look at you its like someone threw a net of stars over you. The only people who look like that are the ones who came here early."

"You've met others like me? Early ones?"

"Mmm-hmm. The Winchesters when they were here, and a few others before. Sometimes it fades, sometimes it doesn't."

The look Pam gives her is full of sorrow and warning. "Yours won't though. Not 'til you've had your run in the world." She reaches out, tucks Jo's bright hair back. "It's why I chose to help you, sweet girl. Now, come on," she adds, taking Jo's hand. "There's some people who want to see you before the crap hits the fan."

Pam leads Jo further into the fields, to a shack with one door and one small window. She draws a set of symbols in white chalk, then swings the door wide and draws Jo inside, smiling widely. They step into darkness, onto floorboards, and Jo hears the click of Bones' nails as he trots beside her.

Then the lights flip on, and it's…

…its home.

The Roadhouse, just the way she remembers it. Just like it is back in her Heaven, only instead of sleeping on the pool table, Ash is sitting at the bar with another jerry-rigged laptop.

"Welcome Banditas!" he calls.

Then the man sitting beside him lifts his head, and the woman behind the bar turns around.

"Mom," breaths Jo. "Dad…"

And somehow, this time she knows…it's really them.

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AN2: Feedback is love...


	7. Family

**AN:** Loves to all who reviewed. For anyone's who's wondering, this takes place post Dark Side of the Moon, sorry if that wasn't really clear.

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7.**

She flies across the room into her father's arms, just like she did so many times when she was little.

He still smells the same; earth and sweat, leather and cordite, and underneath the cologne he'd always worn because her mother loved it on him.

She's laughing and crying at the same time, wet and messy and hiccupping like a little kid. He just hangs onto her and strokes her hair, murmuring, "Oh, Joey. Oh my girl, you grew up so pretty. I'm so proud of you…"

And she can't speak; she just can't because this is better than anything, _anything_ that she was offered in her Heaven. She can feel the difference now, between beloved memory and true soul, like finally being able to grasp what she was reaching for.

Like coming home.

She feels her mother's arms come around her and is happily held between her parents, bundled up in their arms like they used to when she was little, framed between a matching set of heartbeats.

Her mother presses a kiss her hair. "That's my good girl. We knew you'd come back to us, baby, we knew."

She remembered what she'd told Dean, so long ago:

"…_he'd sweep me up in his arms, and I'd breathe in that old leather jacket of his. And my mom, who was sour and pissed from the minute he left, she started smiling again._

"_And we were... we were a family."_

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**AN2:** Feedback makes me wibbly and greatful..._  
_


	8. Solo

**AN:** Oh look, plot! Who put that there? Lulz.

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8.**

It's a risky plan, and neither Bill nor Ellen likes it…but they know it's true:

"Jo can't stay here," Pam says, and the psychic's eyes leave no room for argument. "She does and this place'll stop being her bubble-space and start being her cage."

Bill sighs, nods in resignation. "How do we get from here to the Choirs without taking the AM?"

Ash clears his throat, looking a little nervous. He and Bill have only gotten to know each other a little while; they get along fine, but Bill's clearly top dog here. The thought makes Jo smile a little. Poor Ash…her dad's secretly just a big teddy-bear, always has been.

"There's, ah, there's no 'we'," Ash says, a little apprehensively.

"What?"

"We can't go," Ash clarifies, and Jo feels sick.

"Why?" Ellen demands.

"There're ways to get to the Choir or the Garden without usin' the AM, but only a psychic can get ya there. And I done my math on this one; Pam here's only got enough jungle juice in her to get one vibrational null through those doors with her. Like it or not –"

"Or not," Bill adds in decided undertone.

"– for anyone who ain't wearing a sparkly, sparkly premmie net or rockin' the third eye, this road trip is strictly off-limits."

Jo closes her eyes, feeling like the rug's been pulled out from under her feet all over again.

"_I'll see you on the other side. Probably sooner than later."_

"_Make it later."_

_I always seem to be going away…_

"_You sure you gotta go?"_

"_Yeah…yeah, I gotta go."_

But there's no turning back anymore; even now she can feel it, the world shrinking…pulling down closer over her shoulders…

She squares them, looks up with clear eyes.

"What do I need to do?"


	9. Landslide

**9.**

Ash's version of the Roadhouse doesn't have the old piano that her version does.

It was her daddy's instrument, his solemn promise to bring music to his girls when ever his fingers touched the keys. When Jo was maybe seven, he lifted her up onto the bench with him and taught her the chords even though her little hands could barely splay out to reach all the keys. His voice was her comfort, his music her lullaby.

Jo will always be a REO fan, but her first love is Fleetwood Mac the way her dad plays it on the old upright.

She asks Ash for a piano, and though it puzzles him, he gives her one. When she turns around, there it is, sitting where one of the pool tables used to be.

Jo smiles and takes Bill's hand. He smiles back and follows her over to the piano. He plays 'Rhiannon' for her, singing softly, and she puts her head on his shoulder. The ending notes segue smoothly into 'Landslide', and Jo wants to cry.

This is her daddy's goodbye.

"Well, I've been afraid of changing  
'Cause I've built my life around you  
But time makes you bolder  
Children get older  
I'm getting older too…"

His arms are warm around her, his voice low and husking.

"Love you, Joey."

She lets the first tears fall.


	10. Echo

**10.**

Ellen comes to find her in the old storeroom.

It smells just like it used to when it was real; hops and aluminum, dust and cool concrete.

Jo sits with her back to the far wall, the tears pouring undisturbed down her cheeks, legs stretched out before her, arms folded over her undamaged middle.

"Baby?"

Jo sniffed, lifts one hand to wipe her face. "I'm okay…"

"Oh sweetie," Ellen breathes, coming and sitting beside her. She puts one arm around her daughter's shoulders and kisses her bright hair. "No, you're not."

Jo sighs and puts her face against her mother's shoulder. "It's just…the memories, my Heaven…it was like I hadn't really lost you – which I guess was the point, but…"

"But now you think you really will be."

"Yeah."

Ellen sighs, too, and kisses Jo's hair again. "Oh, baby girl, no. You're not loosing us. We'll be right here waiting for you, and nothing will change that. We'll always know where to find you."

Jo nods, but the crying jag has her in earnest and she sobs, even as Ellen murmurs, "baby," and folds her daughter into her arms. Dimly, both are aware that this is a reiteration of their final moments on earth…swings and roundabouts…this has happened before, will happen again…

Ellen breathes, "You have me, Jo. This is important, what you gotta do, but you have me, and I will always love you."

There's the sound of claws _clip-clipping_ on the concrete.

'Like last time,' Jo thinks. But this is no hell hound.

When the door is nudged open, a golden muzzle appears and Bones gazes at them with those big soulful eyes. Jo holds out a hand to him and he trots over to lick the tears from both their faces. He hides his face against her chest, giving a low whine.

"Yeah," Jo breathes through her tears. "Time to go…"


	11. Departure

**11.**

She hugs Ash goodbye at the door, just before she and Pam pass through it into the unknown.

"You go, emo-kid," he tells her.

"Shut up," she says, socking him in the arm and wrapping her arms around him in the same smooth movement.

He laughs into her hair, and then pulls back, his hands on her shoulders. "Be safe, Jo-glow," he says with a small smile.

"You too, Dr. Bad-ass."

Ash grins.

Then he turns and holds the door open for her and Pam. "Ladies…"

Pam takes point, since she's the one doing the guiding, and Jo follows. There's the sound of claws on hardwood floorboards and Bones brings up the rear.

"Uh," Jo murmurs. "He's coming too?"

Pam looked back at the dog. Bones gazes back at her, dark eyes solemn and determined from his solid stance at Jo's side.

The psychic smiles. "Looks like."

Girl and dog follow her through the door and into the sunlight beyond.


	12. Horses

**12.**

Whoever's slice of Heaven this is, Jo likes it.

There's nothing but yellow fields and green woodlands from horizon to horizon. The air is warm and full of the heady scents of new greenery and ripening wild fruit. She can hear birdsong wherever they go, see the flashing of their plumage as they dart closer than real birds would.

They follow a path beside a river that thunders to itself over silica-white boulders and is banked on either side with grey sand that shimmers when stirred in the sunlight. When it bends and forces them to cross they do so at a gorge with a suspension bridge that looks like the wood and wire of its frame grew out of the cliff-side.

Jo looks down, expecting to see the torrenting waters of the river, but instead there is a steady stream of horses running down the ancient earth and stone channel. Their hides glow white and grey and blue roan, each more handsome than the last. Bones puts his head between the lines and barks happily at them, his tail a bright pennant wagging back and forth.

In the mêlée of horseflesh, Jo catches sight of a single rider, naked save for her long hair that streams in a banner of black behind her.

"Godiva," Pam says softly, and the Lady of Mercia turns upon the back of her steed to salute them.

Both women wave back and continue across the bridge.

When they get to the other side, the world is different again.

**

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AN:** Okay guys, as much as I love your reviews…its time for some constructive criticism. I need to know what you guys like about this story, what you dislike, etc. I don't write/function well without feedback, people!


	13. Justice

**AN:** This one's for davis395 who requested a little action...

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**13.**

There's the sound of a door flying open and a girl with ash blonde hair and bird bright eyes darts down the house's front steps to the two travelers.

"I'll be right back, Tillie," she calls over her shoulder. To Pam and Jo she says, "This way, quickly. An angel showed up and they could be looking for you."

They follow her around the side of the house – this place reminds Jo of her own little suburban patch – and down a garden path into a copse of trees. Overhead is the most spectacular tree house Jo has ever seen; it's got a _slide_ for crying out loud.

There are slightly more important things to focus on though.

"Who are you?" Jo feels she has to ask, though Pam seems to be taking this all very calmly.

The girl gives her a rueful look. "Meg Masters. I think…" She squints at Jo, as though looking for something. "I think you and I have a demon in common, actually."

Jo starts. She's run across quite a few demons since the war began…

"_You're not Sam…"_

…but there's always one that she's going to hate more.

"That time in the bar…Dean told me later that it was called –"

"Yeah," Meg says softly. "They only know it by my name. But I know the bitch's real name now."

Jo makes a decision. _There can be justice_, she thinks, _for me, Sam and Meg. For all the people that evil whore has hurt._

"Tell me," she whispers. "Tell me who to hunt."

"Erzsébet Báthory," Meg says, voice low and rough with loathing. "The countess who bathed in blood."

Pam's look of disgust is eloquent. "I've read about her. She killed almost six-hundred-and-fifty women and girls in the fifteen-hundreds."

"No wonder she went to Hell," Jo murmurs.

"And no wonder she ended up as hellspawn of the first water," Meg adds. "Come on, we're almost there."

She leads them deeper into the copse until they reach a tree that would give most skyscrapers a run for their money. Its roots rise in buttressing arcs not even Sam Winchester would be able to touch the top of. The branches above them are festooned with deep green leaves, their glossy tops flicking the light back and forth and rattling in a light wind.

"A Morton Bay Fig," Jo marvels. Someone gave her a postcard with one on it when she was no more than six. She thought the great tree looked like something out of a fairytale, before she figured out that fairytales were based on bloodshed.

"We went on holiday to Australia when I was a kid," Meg says softly. "There was as park where Tillie and I played…it was full of Morton Bay Figs. We pretended we were Susan and Lucy from the Narnia books."

Pam smiles. "Explains why this one's got a door in it."

And there is.

Jo can barely see it – couldn't make it out before – but there is, a suggestion of a rectangle between two of the towering roots.

Behind them, a great light suddenly blazes to life. Beams of white cut through the leaves of the trees behind them. A bass throb fills the air, irregular and wrathful and at times roughening to a snarl.

"Come on," Pam calls urgently. She lays one open hand on the door and the rectangle of bark peels back in rough sections like the dimpled skin of an orange. The space beyond is dark, the full of the restless air that comes before a storm.

One of the blades of brilliance catches on Meg's face and she freezes, eyes wide.

"The angel," she breathes, "it's found us. Run, _run now_!"

For a moment Jo can't breathe past the fear – it could all end here with one cruel blow – then Bones lets out a low, half-frightened growl, and she finds her frozen feet again.

Meg looks to Jo, her desperate eyes exacting one promise.

Jo nods. "I'll get the black-eyed bitch," she says.

After all, Erzsébet Báthory might be the countess who bathed in blood…

…but Jo Harvelle is the girl who'll give up Heaven.

She turns and plunges again into the dark, Pam before her and Bones at her heels.

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**AN2:** Things can only get crazier, I promise. Review if ye be jammy, and remember, _constructive critisism gets you stuff..._


	14. Sanctuary

**AN:** 'Nother familiar face this chapter. Its like SPN's Greatest Dead Hits over here...and a bit more on the working of Heaven...

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14.**

They hit the ground running in New York, 1967, with an anti-war protest surging around them.

Bodies shove against them, limbs flailing, protest signs held high, collected voices rising up to the sky. Jo almost loses her footing, and only Pam's steady arm and strong grip keeps her upright. They hang onto each other, ducking and darting through the crowd, dodging people and parked cars, postboxes and lampposts. Bones bounds beside Jo, pink tongue flapping from one side of his panting jaws.

Then behind them comes the roar and throb, the blaze of holy light that catches their breath in their throats…

"In here!"

A teenage boy beckons them from a doorway and they dart towards him, desperate to hide somewhere, anywhere.

He ushers them inside what looks like a hotel lobby and bolts the door behind them, leaning against it for a moment and giving them a companionable lift of the eyebrows.

"Well, that was lucky," he says. "I could see them behind you. Damnably quick, those angels."

The irony of the phrasing isn't lost on Jo.

"Thanks…" says Pam, and this time its she that asks, "…but, who are you?"

He gives them a quick smile and as he does he ages, going from a fresh-faced high-schooler to middle-aged man in a matter of seconds. His hair grays and begins to recede. A neatly trimmed goatee appears, as do laugh lines around his mouth. Gone are the flared jeans and Grateful Dead t-shirt, replaced by black slacks, a black shirt and…a white dog collar?

To Jo's unending surprise, Pam about flips out.

She lets out a shriek and launches herself at the pastor, wrapping her arms around his neck in a fierce hug. The pastor, far from being surprised, hugs her back and laughs a little.

"It's good to see you, Pam," he says softly, and Jo feels like she's intruding on something.

Pam draws back, hands still on his shoulders. She's grinning that whisky smile, but her eyes are suspiciously shiny.

"It's good to see you too, Uncle."

They both seem to remember Jo is still there at the same time and turn to her.

"Where are my manners?" Pam says ruefully.

"I'm sure I don't know," the preacher says in undertone, and Pam taps his ribs with one elbow before continuing.

"Uncle, this is Jo Harvelle. She and her mama ran the Roadhouse in Nebraska. You know the one."

He nods and smiles. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Jo. I'm Pastor James Murphy. But everyone mostly just calls me –"

"Pastor Jim," Jo finishes, feeling her smile widen. "I know you. Or, um, I know of you."

Pastor Jim looks intrigued. "Really? I didn't know I'd garnered a reputation."

"Dean talked about you. Our – well, _my_ last night on earth – Bobby pulled out his older hunting journals. He and my mom and the boys talked about all the people they'd known. Who we might see on the other side…"

She pauses, feeling suddenly melancholic. One hand unthinkingly seeks the comfort of Bones warm coat.

"We…we had no idea it was like this. We didn't know we'd be separated."

"I think most people don't, even once they get up here," Pastor Jim says. "I think that's the idea. It seems to me, however, that anyone who has had prolonged contact with the supernatural can tell the difference almost immediately."

"Explains why it's only been hunters and a possession victim that have let us into their Heavens," Pam murmurs.

Jo blinks. "Let us in?"

Pam smiles. "It's why only a psychic can be a guide, sweetness. In that split second between bubbles we have to seek out one that's receptive to outsiders. Most people don't want their little slices of paradise to be shown up as an angelic diorama project. Those who know it's fake already…"

"Will be more likely to let company call." Jo nods. "Makes sense…but what about Godiva?"

Pastor Jim smiles as he answers. "Ah, Godiva. She's one of the few exceptions. That is a woman in possession of true grace. She allows anyone to pass through her Heaven. Alive or dead, she's a true protector of the people."

Jo smiles again. "Knew there was a reason I liked that story when I was a kid…"


	15. Lakeside

**15.**

The lake is pristine, barely a ripple on the surface. The mountains lining its shores are reflected along its edges, the centre taken up with the uninterrupted stretch of blue overhead; a second sky.

Emma sits on the sandy shore at its southern end and simply watches the shadows of the trees move as the sun arcs overhead.

As dreams go this is one of the nicer ones.

"Hey."

She looks over her shoulder, smiling, and the angel hands her a beer and takes a seat beside her on the rough sand.

Emma pops the cap with her key ring and takes a sip. Amitiel does the same, and for a little while they don't talk. Just sit and enjoy the view.

"I miss this," Emma says quietly.

"The lake?"

The girl smiles, lets out a soft huff of laughter. "Yeah, but…I actually meant the beer."

Ami raises her dark eyebrows. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. They only make it at home and this one – the Summer Ale – they only make it during summer."

"Ah," says Ami. "So while it's the right season for the South Pacific…"

"It's not for the Northern Hemisphere, yeah."

"That sucks."

"Pretty much."

There's a slight pause before Emma continues, "So, I'm still doing this?"

Ami nods. "The Enochian sigils on his ribs keep me and all the other Heaven-fairies from finding him, but the spell should let you track his car."

Emma frowns. "Why didn't the 'other Heaven-fairies' think of something like this?"

Ami shrugs, smirks. "They're too arrogant? Honestly, I don't think it ever occurred to them. They're all about the big picture, Emma, and I'm all about the finicky details."

Emma smirks too. "Well, we all have our talents." She toasts Ami and they clink the necks of their beer bottles. "So, I'll see you on the other side."

"Hopefully not," Ami remarks dryly. She looks up, scrutinizing the flawless sky above them. "I've got to go, Em."

Emma nods. "Good luck."

"You too."

The angel gets to her feet and begins to walk along the beach. Emma knows that she'll disappear in a minute.

"Hey, Ami?" she calls.

Amitiel looks back. "Yeah?"

Emma can't speak for a moment. When she gets her voice back she blurts, "I'm sorry. I – I'm sorry I couldn't say yes."

"Its okay, Em." Amitiel smiles ruefully. "With any luck, it'll all be okay."

Emma wakes seconds later on her back in a motel bed. She gazes for a full minute at the ceiling. It's a dirty, peeling version of sky-blue, and looks darker because the sun is only just coming up. She can feel the gifted knowledge of the tracking spell pressing against her mind; whispers from a disembodied voice.

"Work to do," she breathes, and climbs out of bed.

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**AN:** Oh look, a plot twist. Review time! And remember, a _contructively criticized_ author is a happy author...


	16. Veils

**16.**

Pastor Jim Murphy is exactly as described.

In all her life, Jo doesn't think she's ever met a man so kind. She loves her father, but he's throw his fair share of punches. The only things Jim ever raised his hands to were the things that went bump in the night.

"Which is quite something," Pam remarks dryly, "when you think that the guy had an arsenal in the basement of his church."

Jim looks caught between feeling faintly bashful and pride of the fact.

"Its hardly remarkable," he mutters, looking down at his hands as he took a set of ornate keys from his pocket and began trying them in the door to the lobby. "If I recall correctly, Bobby never took a human life."

"No, but there was that one time he almost filled John Winchester up with buckshot," Jo puts in, remembering Dean and Bobby's rueful smiles as they reminisced over bourbon. "'Cocked the shotgun and everything'."

"I remember," Jim says, trying yet another key.

Jo's been watching curiously as he does this. Each time, the locks have stayed silent, and Jim has tried another key.

This time however…

The key turns, and turns, and keeps right on turning clockwise. Each full circle sets of a series of clicks, a waterfall of staccato notes. Over and over, faster and faster, until a jangling, ticking fever-pitch is reached.

The door slams itself open, and the three of them take a hurried step back. Air rushes past them into the vacuum. Beyond the doorway, Jo can see only stars.

Until a ripple of light flows past, like a curtain of translucent color. It happens again not two seconds later, this time in the form of a dozen ribbons of pale green, and then a serpentine spill of blue and magenta.

"What is it?" she asks, half-hypnotized by the rainbow brilliance.

"Up here they're called The Veils," Jim explains. "But on earth we know them as the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis."

"The Northern and Southern Lights," Jo says.

Jim nods. "They're the places where the very lowest reaches of the Heavenly plain brush against the Earthly one. It's the last place an angel will go to look you, and the colliding of the plains will hide your souls from them for a little while at least."

He unhooks one of the keys from the ring and hands it to Pam. "When you get to the other side of the lights, use this to unlock the door you find. If you find it already open, _do not go through_. Just shut it and use the key."

"I will." She looks hesitantly at her uncle, dark eyes unsure for the first time since Jo has met her. "What…Uncle, what happens if we go through the door? Without using the key?"

Jim's face is grim, and when he speaks, so is his voice.

"Suspension," he says. "Suspension forever between Heaven and Earth. And after that…only madness."


	17. Retrievers

**17.**

The Veils are a strange place.

There's no sound here save their breathing. Not even their footfalls sound, and since they're essentially walking on air…well.

Light of every conceivable colour peels and twists around them making lovely and impossible shapes, glinting off Jo's hair and Pam's silver rings. It's like walking through a kaleidoscope, though Bones finds it too puzzling to be pretty and stays adhesive-close to Jo's legs.

Without warning, as always, there is a brilliant flare of white overhead, like sheet lightning in a summer storm, and the travelers freeze.

Blue and green and red billows around them, literally veiling them from sight. There is another flash, and Bones' hackles rise. Jo can feel him vibrating with a silent growl. She slips a hand into Pam's and Pam squeezes it.

"Get lost, you winged freak," she whispers, dark eyes watchful and bitter.

Jo holds her breath, counts the seconds between the flash and roar.

One more flash of white light, and the world is drenched in unadulterated colour again.

Jo lets her breath out slowly, sagging a little. Pam sighs.

"Come on," she mutters. "Before the Holy Hand Grenade wanders back over and explodes this time."

They flit back into the dancing lights.

As they walk, Jo reaches out one hand to trail it over a veil of green and smiles as it ripples blue for moment. Bones snaps at it, and tiny gold sparks fall from his jaws.

Pam is watching them.

"What does it remind you of?" she asks Jo.

Jo looks up at her, questioning. "The Veils?"

"Yeah."

Jo shrugs. "Lots of things, but mostly…its kinda dorky."

Pam smile is half-way to a smirk. "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah…"

"C'mon, Joey, lay it on me."

Jo gives her a crooked smile and after a pause she begins with, "when I was fifteen me and Bevin Brown snuck into the senior prom and spiked the punch. I got the vodka from the Roadhouse and he got his older brother to let us in when no one was looking."

She smiles to herself, a small, private motion that is full of memory.

"I remember walking in and thinking it looked like a dream. I mean it was just the school gym covered in glitter and crepe paper, but…but they had these coloured lights going, y'know? Patterns moving over the walls, reflecting off the mirror ball."

She sighs, tipping her head back and gazing at the turning stars that can just been seen through the brilliance of the Veils.

"There was one moment, when a blue light got pointed at that mirror ball and…and it was like the room was snowing stars and fireflies. When I got older, it was the only reason I went to my prom; just to see that blue light hit all that cut glass and look like snow."

She glances at Pam, cheeks flushing.

"Like I said; dorky."

Pam chuckles. "Trust me, cutie, I've heard worse. It's actually kinda sweet."

"What about you? What does all this make you think of?"

Pam gives her a sidelong smile. "I used to visit Uncle Jim when I was a kid. I played in the church sometimes, or he'd read to me there, because I liked looking at the stained glass windows as the sun came through them. There was one of an –"

White light roars across their vision, momentary blinding the travelers. Jo lets out a yell and hears Pam do the same. Bones wails his fear and discomfort at her knees.

"There you are!" a voice says, huge, saccharine, full of death and cold. "I've been looking all over for you!"

The light peels back, and at the centre of it is a shape that might be a woman… Might be, if her hair were not a skein of rippling fire, if there weren't two sets of hollow spaces hanging over her shoulders as wings. There's a short, gleaming sword in her right hand and every few seconds her face ripples, becoming that of a leopard, then a creature with two sets of eyes, then mask painted with stars, then a woman again. The woman-face is smiling, sickly sweet.

"Running around, making all kinds of trouble." She twirls the sword in agile fingers. "It's not very nice, you know."

Pam and Jo back up, Jo grabbing a handful of Bones' coat and pulling him with them. His hackles are up, and it feels strange under her hand…

"Its time to go back now," the angel says, advancing on them. "Time to go home." She shakes her head, face flickering all the while. Woman, leopard, four-eyes, star-mask, woman…

"It's so silly," she continues, "crashing around and making a mess, and after we've made such nice places for you all."

"Nice boxes to keep us in you mean," Pam calls over the thunder of the angel's presence as it presses down on them. Jo can feel her bones thrumming in time with it.

The angel scowls, arrogance filling its alien features. The leopard face snarls at them, its massive teeth glinting in the drowning white light.

"I am Mathlai, and you _will_ show respect for me," she snaps, all artificial sweetness wiped clean away.

Bones' coat ripples beneath Jo's hand, as though the flesh beneath were a surging tide. She looks down in surprise, just in time to see the retriever expand, contort, roaring in the throws of a transformation. His hair darkens, his eyes blaze with lambent color and the old collar around his neck becomes a band of gold and black stone.

He parts his jaws, eye-teeth easily the length of her middle finger, and bellows back at the angel.

"I AM ANUBIS, AND _YOU_ WILL SHOW RESPECT FOR _ME_!"

Jo can only stare, shocked to her core, at the creature that used to be Sam Winchester's dog.

Pam grabs her hand. "Run!"

"But, he – what about Bones?"

"He's doing this to protect us. Come on!"

She lets Pam drag her away; drag her to the door…

"The key," Jo gasps, "we can't forget the key."

Pam pulls it from around her neck –

The blast wave from behind picks them then up, blows the door open, and hurls them into the screaming abyss beyond.

Jim's words follow Jo like an eternal echo into purgatory.

_Suspension forever between Heaven and Earth. And after that…_

_Only madness…_

_Only madness…_

_Only madness…_

**

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AN:** _So_. Bones is in fact the Egyptian god of death. Wow. Even I didn't see _that_ one coming, and I'm _writing_ the damn thing!


	18. Stranger

**18.**

The Impala's gas light comes on forty miles out from Cicero, and Dean, despite his desperate need to push on, is forced to pull into the next fill up joint he sees.

The gas station is one of the newer ones, with an attached café and music piped out to the pumps. There's a motel next door to it too, and Dean ear-marks it as a possible liftoff point. He can pack his stuff there, he imagines, put things in order before he…

Out of the corner of his eye; a person-shaped blur of beige and black. He whips 'round, sure he's been discovered –

"Cas…"

– But it's not the angel, just a girl in a cream wool duffle coat and dark jeans, watching him with a hesitant expression.

"Can I help you?" he asks, because she's looking at him like she knows him and its making him nervous.

She looks pretty nervous herself. He watches as she bites her lip and asks,

"Dean Winchester?"

Every muscle in his body tightens painfully. His nerves scream out. _How…?_

Angel or demon, it doesn't matter, _they've found him!_

But the girl doesn't attack. She just eyes him warily.

"I'm going to take the look of horror as a yes," she mutters. Under any other circumstances it might have been funny.

Then, to his everlasting surprise she takes a breath, sighs it out and holds out her hand.

"I'm Emma Wester, and we need to talk."

Operating on a kind of autopilot, he dazedly shakes her hand.

"What about?" he asks.

"Your prayer," she tells him matter-of-factly, "and how it might be answered."

**

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AN:** Behold! Deano! And Emma! And...intrigue. Kinda. Just review already...


	19. Suspension

**19.**

There is nothing here.

No sound.

No light.

She cannot feel a thing, save the sensation of trying to draw breath.

But there's no air, either.

There is only dark in the suspension between Heaven and Earth.

Only dark and madness…

_Only madness…_

Only _then_ there's a rush of light and sound, and the feel of a hand closing tightly around her wrist and pulling up and up and up…

**

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AN:** More soon, promise. Remember, its a drabble fic.


	20. Reasons

**AN:** Loves to all who reviewed and said such sweet things! You make my day.

**

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20.**

Emma Wester is a reasonably pretty girl with long brown hair and eyes you can't tell the color of from a distance.

Sitting across from her in one of the café's booths, Dean can see they're hazel, leaning towards the green end of the spectrum, but if she were to get up and walk across the room the color would muddy more and more the further away she got.

"What are you?" he asks, in no mood to beat around the bush.

She sighs. And where before there were strung nerves, there is only pragmatism and resignation.

"You and I have one thing in common...apart from brown hair, English as a first language and a deeply ingrained love of pie."

Dean's caught a little off guard by the last item.

"You love pie?"

"I _adore_ pie, but that's beside the point."

"…Right." He twists one corner of his napkin, both elbows on the table. "So what is that point? What is it that we have in common?"

She studies him for a moment, those muddied eyes somehow ancient for a breathless second. It makes him think uncomfortably of Cas.

"We won't say yes," she murmurs

It's like the world dropping out from under his feet.

Solemnity fills her face. "Although from what I've been hearing, that may change."

He can't look at her.

He can't look at her, because she's one of the six billion reasons he kept telling Zach and Michael and everyone else to fuck off. She's one of the living, breathing reasons he kept trying to find another way that wouldn't level the world carve a hole in the human population.

She's one of the reasons, and he can't look at her because she _knows it_.

"You said something about a prayer?" he mutters.

Emma doesn't reply, and he _has_ to look up at her. The expression on her face isn't what he's expecting.

She looks perplexed by him.

"Yes," she says. "I'm here because you made a prayer, and the angel I'm suppose to be a vessel for heard it."

He stares. "You're kidding."

"Nope. And seeing as how you haven't prayed in earnest since you were four the shock of hearing it just about knocked her clean off her perch."

"Wait," he demands, curiosity getting the better of him. "Wait a second, explain this to me. How did this _one particular angel_ hear my prayer? More to the point, why does _she_ care, and how did she tell _you_?"

Emma smiles – actually smiles – for the first time since he's laid eyes on her. "Buy me a hot chocolate and I'll tell you everything."

Dean doesn't need to be told twice.


	21. Styx

**AN:** Came home from a crappy day and found reviews waiting for me in my inbox for this fic. Aww…thanks guys.

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21.**

She's rising fast, so very fast, and she's not sure how, but it's not through the nameless dark of suspension any more.

It's through water.

All at once she breaks the surface, in a flurry of light striking her eyes, the sound of her own gasping breaths filling her ears, the feel of the water sloshing and frothing about her.

The hand gripping her wrist becomes two and she is hauled up, nearly clear of the water and…

And into a boat.

It's an old-fashioned row boat, the kind with varnished wooden oars and a hand painted name on its side. Jo slumps in its bottom, between the narrow cushioned seats and coughs her lungs to pieces, too blinded by the sunshine at first to see around her.

When she blinks away the water in her eyes, her line of sight follows the hand still resting on her shoulder, up the wrist and forearm, to the broad shoulders and bear-bearded face…

"Un-uncle John?" she manages.

John Winchester smiles back. "Hey there, Jo," he says. "Been a while, kiddo."

She finds a smile. "Ye-yeah."

John helps her sit up and pulls a blanket from under one of the seats to put around her shoulders, though she hardly needs it; the sunlight it thick here, an almost solid presence that strokes over her like a warm hand. While he picks up the oars and begins to row, Jo takes in their surrounds as they glide easily downstream.

They're on a river, its waters inky black as they lick against the boat's sides. Beyond the surface glitter there is nothing but dark emptiness. Jo shivers.

On one side of the river is a jungle; a tangle of verdant green and the occasional spill of warm color that Jo realizes are huge star-shaped flowers. Butterflies move from blossom to blossom, each insect like an enormous living kite, the great planes of their wings glinting with metallic and pastel hues. She can smell the leaves, the rich loam the trees grow from, the raw honey that seeps from the flowers. Only the river lacks a scent, and that's no surprise.

It has a sound though. It whispers, with a hundred voices it seems. She pricks up her ears and listens hard, but can't pick one apart from its fellows.

When she looks up again, John has a knowing smile on his face. "Listening?" he asks.

She nods.

"It takes a lot of practice," he tells her, "but after a long while you can figure out what they're saying. Sometimes you can even find who they belong too."

He gives her a significant look from under his dark brows.

"You could hear me?" Jo breathes. "While I was…while I was down there?"

John nods, shoulders bunching in the rhythmic pull-and-sweep as he continues to row. The jungle slides by, constant and vivacious.

"It's easier to find people you've known," he murmurs.

Jo is quite for a moment, then says, "Uncle John?"

"Yeah, kiddo?"

"Where are we?"

John smiles that enigmatic smile of his.

"That," he says tilting his head towards the fluid dark they float on, "is the River Styx. And all of this…this is Amavasya.

"This is the dark side of the moon."

**

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AN2:** 'Amavasya' is actually the Sanskrit phrase for 'new moon', but in this case I'm going to claim creative interpretation and artistic license. Roll with it people.


	22. Postal

**AN:** You know what puzzles me greatly? I have at least twenty people watching this thing (you know who you are) and yet most of you just lurk. I'm just putting it out there: I work best with some feedback to go on, guys. Also, this isn't a Stephanie Meyer novel, therefore _lurking isn't sexy_.

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**22.**

For so long it was just him and Sam in the same awful, rickety little boat, thirty _billion_ miles away from sanity and solid ground…and now there's someone else there with him, gazing at him with indefinable eyes and singing the same set of swear words at the heavens.

Well, kinda.

"So, lemme get this straight," Dean says, frowning at her at she calmly sips her hot chocolate. "You _like_ this angel."

She smiles again, mouth crooking up at one corner. "Yeah…Dean, look, just about every angel you've met has been of the warrior persuasion, right? I mean with the exception of Joshua, of course."

"You know about that?"

"Pfft." She rolls her eyes. "What _don'_t I know? That's what I'm trying to get at. My angel, Amitiel, she's not a warbird."

"Lover not a fighter, huh?"

"Something like that." Emma chuckles a little. "I suppose you could say she's in admin."

Dean quirks an eyebrow as he takes a swallow of black coffee.

"Amitiel is an angel of change, misery, upsets, that kind of thing."

This time Dean's wordless question is framed with a scowl. Emma just smiles back.

"What do people do when they're miserable or upset? Apart from panic and throw tanties, I mean."

Realization fills him up like hot soup. "They pray. And your girl…"

"…is there to hear their grievances. She sorts true prayer from all the bullshit that people send up there, and sends them out amongst the ranks to be answered."

Dean scoffs in disbelief. "You can't honestly expect me to believe, _after everything_, that angels go around answering people's prayers!"

"Well, that's part of the problem," Emma sighs. "They haven't for a long time. Prayer – unless it's of use to the war with Lucifer – is being ignored. Has been for a while now."

"Not surprising," Dean mutters.

Emma puts down her hot chocolate, rest her elbows on the table and gestures with her hands as she talks, her face serious and intent.

"Something I need for you to understand is that Amitiel was among the first angels brought into being by God. She's old, Dean. She's listened in on humanity for its entire existence…_and she still genuinely likes us_."

Dean can't help himself. He's impressed. He's spent most of his life trying to save people, but sometimes he's not sure he likes the majority of them all that much.

"Not only that," Emma continues, "but for the past however many centuries, her central way of helping people has been cut off. She's gone from being Head of International Operations to a stymied postal worker in the dead letter office."

She gives him a rueful look.

"It's made her a little cranky."

Dean smirks. "I'll bet it has. So, the 'stymied postal worker' is, what, going postal?"

Emma holds her thumb and forefinger about a millimeter apart. "Lil' bit."

He frowns. "You still haven't said… What does all this have to do with me, Emma? With my prayer?"

Emma shrugs. "You asked for help. If I had the guts to say yes she'd be having this conversation with you instead of me – and don't give me that look. There's nothing noble about me refusing her; I'm a complete cowardy custard, to be frank."

The description gets a small sardonic huff of laughter from Dean.

His companion gives a small, wry smile. "As it is, Amitiel's working with what she's got on the ground – i.e., yours truly – and what she's got upstairs, which is…complicated. Help's coming though, and soon."

"Great," Dean says, "but how is she supposed to get it here? The Heavenly Host of Assholes can't find me, or Sam, remember?" He frowns at her. "How the hell did _you_ find me?"

"I was a ninja in a former life," Emma deadpans. "I used a spell to track your car. Amitiel will use something else, an object of significant power. The gold amulet your brother gave you is probably the only thing strong enough."

Dean freezes.

_Oh fuck._

Emma catches sight of his expression and thunder clouds her face.

"Dean," she says quietly, "it suddenly occurs to me that you're not wearing the amulet. Where is it?"

"Ah…"

"You do have it, don't you?"

"I…well…" He awkwardly rubs the back of his neck. "It was a very stressful time…"

"You _idiot_," she breathes. "Oh God. We are so very, _very_ fucked."

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**AN2:** Boy are you ever. How will these crazy kids make it work? And where the heck is that amulet...?


	23. Forgive

**AN:** hugs and hearts to reviewers! Especially magicfingers73, lurker no longer!

**

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23.**

The Styx carries them on and on, past acres and acres of lush jungle. Sometimes Jo hears the cries of exotic birds from the tree-covered banks, or the howls of what might be monkeys. A few times there's a shout, very like a human voice, and once something that could have been children's laughter.

"Are there…are there _people_ in there?" she asks John.

A flicker of movement on the west bank catches her eye and she swings round in time to see a shape darting effortlessly though the trees.

Jo gasps; it's a woman.

She runs with her hair streaming out behind her, her laughter carrying to them across the dark water. As she moves, she flickers, like the ghosts Jo hunted when she was alive, though the movement is smoother than the staticky leaps earthbound spirits make. Jo watches her dance through the trees for about half a minute before with a sound like an inhalation and a puff of sparks, she disappears completely.

Jo blinks and turns to John, silently demanding an explanation.

"They're dreamers," he tells her. "This is the only realm of the after life living people can truly reach, Jo. They don't even know they're doing it, but sometime people will dreamwalk here. Most of the time they won't remember it, they'll just wake up from an amazing night's sleep and go on with their lives."

"Do they…can they see us?"

John shakes his head, eyes so like his sons' – like Dean's – dark and sad. "None of them have ever taken any notice of me, or any of the other dead who stay here."

Jo sits up sharply. "There are others here? Others like us? This isn't just your slice of Heaven?"

John laughs. "No, kiddo, no way my brain could put together something like this!"

Dean has his father's smile as well as his eyes. Jo wonders why she never saw it before now. Probably because she never saw John Winchester smile, or if she did, she doesn't remember.

It strikes her then, that this is the man who got her father killed, who put a man she might have loved through so much, who made two soldiers out of boys to fight a war that never really belonged to any of them…

But she can't be angry with him.

She can't. Fate and angels played him as a pawn as much as they did anyone else.

She forgave him, she realizes, the moment she laid eyes of her father in Ash's blue Roadhouse Heaven. Or maybe it was later, when Bill set his fingers on the keys and played 'Rhiannon', substituting her name in and making it "Joanna rings like a bell through the night, and wouldn't you love to love her?" But it happened, and she feels the lighter for it.

Maybe John notices, maybe he doesn't, but he lets the oars rest in their locks, the current drawing them steadily along.

"This place…Amavasya isn't supposed to be here, Jo. It came into being because people, certain people, saw through the illusions of Heaven and wanted something real. Their brushes with the supernatural let them see though Heaven's illusions. So, they went on quests, found guides and doors and allies. Some of them ended up in the Styx…

"Luckily, even back then, there was someone to pull them out."

He looks over his shoulder. Jo notices there's a fork in the river coming up. The right continues to be the dark, whispering waters of the Styx, while the left flows clearer, brighter, reflecting the blue of the clear sky overhead.

John takes up the oars again and angles the row boat down the left fork. This new river is narrower than the wide and mighty Styx. It twists and turns, undulating like a great blue and silver serpent.

"Who?" Jo asks.

"You're about to meet them," John tells her.

Then they round a corner and the sight steals Jo's breath away.

"We're here…" murmurs John.

**

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AN2:** Bit of a filler, but it needed to be dealt with.


	24. Temple

**24.**

The ziggurat rises over them, a temple of stone the color of desert sand, which in the rich sunlight, glows.

"Its beautiful," Jo breathes, and it is.

At its top, Jo can see a fountain that casts arcs of diamond droplets into the warm air. A channel runs down the centre of the ziggurat's side, occasionally crossed by small foot bridges that follow the lines of the steps that make up the structure. These steps are wide, but shallow, like a series of stacked platforms, each scattered with people.

From the boat, Jo can see two men in worn jeans and plaid play cards, another in knight's doublet showing two teenagers how to string a long bow almost as tall as he is. Near them a girl, in a ballet dress that appears to be made entirely of autumn leaves, teaches a group of little children how to pirouette upon their tip-toes. There's a woman with flowers in her hair standing before an easel painting while her ball-gowned companion plays upon a harp and sings. Her voice is low and sweet, though the words are is a language Jo doesn't know…

"Oṃ bhūr bhuvaḥ svaḥ  
Tat savitur vareṇyaṃ  
Bhargo devasya dhīmahi  
dhiyo yo naḥ pracodayāt…"

Where the stone steps meet the water, they simply disappear beneath the waves, except for the west end where they've been eroded away. A small beach is there, simply a crescent of white sand that catches the sunlight like a rising fingernail moon, but upon the sand she can see a set of wicker lawn furniture.

There's a table with three chairs, and is those chairs are people. One is a young woman, blonde, beautiful, maybe ten years older than Jo with an equally blonde little girl in her lap. The next is a man in a blue suit, his tie loosened and his collar open. He watches them with curious, world-weary dark eyes.

The last is…

"Pam!" Jo shouts, ecstatic.

The row boat's bow kisses the sand and Jo launches herself from it, running across the small beach to the other woman. Pam rises and runs laughing over to the young blonde. They hug, hanging onto each others shoulders and exclaiming over the other's survival.

"Did Uncle John pull you out too?" Jo asks.

"He did," Pam says, smiling. "About two days before now."

Jo's eyebrows go up. "They have days here?"

"Sure do," John says coming over to them. The row boat now rests secure on the sand behind him, and the legs of his jeans are wet to the knees with river water, white sand sticking to his shins and bare feet.

There's the rasp of little feet over sand and Jo sees the little girl running over to them. She cries out, "Daddy!" and reaches out to John who swings her into his arms.

"Tara!" he laughs.

Jo feels her eyebrows climb even further but doesn't ask.

"Come on," John says, "we've got a lot to talk about. And there are a few people you should meet…"

**

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AN:** A ziggurat is a type of pyramid built by the Aztecs and Mayans and the lyrics are the Gayatri Mantra. For more about both hit up Wikipedia, and to hear a version of the mantra sung search 'Battlestar Galactica soundtrack Apocalypse'. Which I find rather appropriate, really. So, any guesses on who the blonde woman with Tara is? Also, theories on Tara herself?


	25. Mary

**AN:** epic loves to all who reviewed, after an amazingly cruddy day you guys put a real bounce back in my step. You all guessed right for the ID on the mystery blonde, and I'm glad everyone's on board with Tara. So, without further ado, here's the beginning of our baby girl's story…

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25.**

Jo sits on the steps of the golden ziggurat, her toes drifting back and forward through the waters of the Aletheia River.

The sun is sinking in the west, and the luxurious sunlight is turning from amber to burnt orange. Choruses of bird song can be heard in the trees, along with the whoop of monkeys and the laughter of passing dreamers.

Jo stares across to the opposite bank of the Aletheia and thinks.

It feels like the moment she got here, she's been meeting people. It's wonderful, but there are so many, and so _very_ many of them know the Winchesters in some way.

There's Molly, who was laid to rest by them over a decade after she died, and Nancy who they rescued from a hoard of demons only to be killed by Lilith.

The man in the blue suit is Agent Victor Hendrickson, who died in the same blaze of demon fire as Nancy and before then had pursued the boys across the country thinking they were psychotic criminals. Before he died, he and Dean were on their way to being friends.

One of the guys playing cards is Daniel Elkins, former owner of the legendary Colt, and the other is Steve Wandell, a hunter who met his end at the hands of Erzsébet Báthory, though she was wearing Sam Winchester at the time. He told Jo his daughter is about her age.

Ten minutes after she arrived with John, Caleb Reaves arrived in another boat with Isaac Mahon. The Mahons were regulars at the Roadhouse two years back. Jo looked up to Tamara as one of the few female hunters in the field. She hadn't known that Isaac had died…or that he'd died going after the Seven Deadly Sins with the Winchesters.

"It was my own stupid fault," Isaac confessed. "We went in half-cocked, got cornered and in my case got dead." Familiar anxiety filled his face. "I hope Tamara got out okay."

Levayah laid her small hand on his shoulder, eyes as green as new olives, wings only just visible (a faint print of feathers shimmering upon the air) over her slender shoulders. "She did, Isaac. She's alive and well and with friends."

And that's another thing; the angels.

There's three of them here in Amavasya. Rogues of a sort, though Levayah and her siblings aren't warriors like Cas is. They were keepers before they came here, discovering the seeds of the fledgling sanctuary and using their own power to help it grow into a tiny paradise.

Levayah looks like something out of a John William Waterhouse painting in her dress that actually is made out of autumn leaves. She spends her time looking after the children that live here, teaching them, keeping them entertained. She loves each and every one of them.

Saritiel is the young archer that Jo spotted before. He and some of the younger hunters watch Amavasya's boarders, keeping out unwelcome interlopers and guarding against the discovery of less compassionate angels. Behind her, upon on of the upper platforms, Jo can hear him playing a duet with Olivia Lowry; he on his guitar, she on her harp…

And then a voice makes the duet a trio; Harayel has a warm tenor that eases the soul, but little is known about him, as far as Jo can tell, and he is hardly ever seen.

When he looked at her, it was like he saw everything inside her. Like he knew. Like he cared.

Jo shivers and rubs the goose bumps covering her arms.

"Cold?"

She looks up to see Mary Winchester looking back at her.

"Oh," Jo says, "no, I'm okay, just…"

Mary's look is knowing. "Harayel, huh?"

"Am I that obvious?"

Mary shrugs and sits beside her. "He has that effect on people. It's a memory thing."

"So he's…an angel of memory?"

"And of pain, and decisions. Three of the things that people really dread in life."

"And death," Jo murmurs, eyes going back across the water.

Mary nods. "Very true."

They sit quietly for a little while, shoulder to shoulder, simply gazing at the luxuriant world around them.

"Jo," Mary says softly, "I feel I owe you some kind of explanation."

Jo blinks, mind momentarily blanking. "What for?"

Mary looks at her, and in that lovely face Jo can see both her sons.

And her daughter.

"For Tara," Mary says. "I know you have to be curious about her."

The elder woman's eyes flick up and to the right. Near where the trio is being played, John Winchester crouches by the water channel and shows Tara how to float little origami lanterns on its surface. They bob and sparkle towards the top of the temple; the channel runs from the river to feed the fountain, its current flowing up instead of down. Tara claps and laughs and dances excitedly from foot to foot, clinging to her father's shirt.

Mary is smiling too, though very sadly.

"I was so frightened when I got pregnant," she begins. "It was a month after John proposed, and I'd made that deal with Azazel the same night. He killed my parents then, too. John was all I had in the world and I didn't feel ready to…but I was going to be a mother. And when she arrived…"

She draws a great breath, light filling her eyes. Love.

"Oh, she was so beautiful. She was the light of our lives from the word go, and we couldn't get enough of her. She came just after Christmas, you know, and John used to call her the best present ever. He wanted to call her Christina, but I…Tara's mostly a Gaelic name, but in Sanskrit…"

"It means 'star'," Jo murmurs.

Mary smiles. "Yes. She was my bright star, my guiding light. My gift. There's nothing quite like having a child, Jo, having a piece of yourself to hold. Her first year was a learning curve, but her second was dream. Everything was new for her, so it was new for us, too. Colors were brighter, sunrises better, food – especially sweet things – were a miracle to behold. And language… She was talking then, words coming a mile a minute and learning new ones all the time. I taught her to sing, and she surprised John on his birthday when he came home, piping 'Happy Birthday' from the doorway when he got home.

"I thought, 'this is how life is supposed to be.' No hunting, no demons, no omens or signs. I still put salt on windowsills and doorways, but only when John wasn't looking. I still hung herbs, but said they were for cooking. I traced wards in holy water and pretended I was washing windows. But they were only motions. Just echoes from a bygone era.

"And they didn't protect us."

"What happened?" Jo whispers.

For a moment, Mary's eyes are ancient with remembered grief.

"Tara got sick."

**

* * *

AN2:** 'Aletheia' is the Greek word for truth. Saritiel is an angel of **freedom** and companionship. Harayel is an angel of pain, decisions and **memory**. Levayah is an angel of regeneration, confession and **sanctuary**. Well, according to the internet anyway…


	26. Storybook

**AN:** SO much love for all you jammy reviewers! I'm over the moon that you guys all like the idea of Tara…so here's the rest of the tale.

**

* * *

26.**

"_Tara got sick."_

Those three words are haunting.

"It was fatigue first, then listlessness, then fever and night terrors. Her temperature soared so high I thought she would burn up from the inside out. The doctors put her in Intensive Care, but she didn't respond to treatment.

"The life drained out her and she just…faded away.

"I remember, afterwards, thinking that it didn't matter whether a person died from a demon or a common virus, they were still gone and it still hurt just as much. Mystical or mundane, the result is the same in the end.

"My guiding light had gone dark just over a month before her third birthday."

Mary sighs, looks back over her shoulder at her daughter. Jo follows her gaze, and they watch her for a few minutes. She rests curled in John's arms, the last rays of the sun catching on her tangle of rich gold hair. Her round cheeks are pink with warmth and sleep, long dark eyelashes like inky brush strokes. She's like an Anne Geddes picture, or a Renaissance cherub.

"How could you cope?" Jo asks, eyes still fixed on the little girl, "how could you cope losing that?"

"We had to," Mary answers. "We had to keep going. Life kept on happening and dragged us along with it. We got married, went on our honeymoon, came home…and in April the following year, I was pregnant again."

"With Dean," Jo says, feeling that familiar kernel of warmth spark inside her.

Mary glances at her, her look knowing (which is a rather uncomfortable thought) and nods. "With Dean." She hums and smiles. "My angel. My little man."

She lets out a soft laugh.

"I thought I'd be prepared for him, after Tara, but boys are a totally different kettle of fish. All go, all the time. Tara wanted to investigate things, Dean wanted to take them apart and see how they worked. We lost three alarm clocks in as many days to that boy. He was always so convinced that once he got it in pieces he'd be able to put it back together. _I_ was convinced he was going to be a mechanic, or an engineer. Maybe even a designer, for cars or robotics…"

"But he's a hunter."

"He's a hunter," Mary agrees wearily. "An amazing one, but…"

Jo knows the answer to this one too. "You wanted something else for him. My mom did too, for me. When I was dying…I felt like such an idiot. I could've been a thousand miles away in a classroom becoming a cryptozoologist or something." She sighs. "But that wouldn't have worked either. I'm not good at walking away from things."

"Hunters never are," Mary says, and Jo smiles.

"Hey, Mary?"

"Mmm-hmm?"

"With Harayel being a memory angel and all, did he restore the ones you had of Sam and Dean, when they went back?"

Mary grins this time. "Oh yes. I was so happy when he did. I mean it was awful, really, but just seeing them…" She laughs, delighted. "My boys grew up handsome."

Jo hums, flushing to the roots of her pale hair. Mary sees.

"I thought as much." She raises questioning eyebrows at the younger woman. "Dean?"

"Um," says Jo, and Mary laughs again.

"Oh, there's that echo again," she breathes, and doesn't explain why.

**

* * *

AN2:** Curious about the echo? Have a hunt around on beloved-stranger(dot)deviantart(dot)com and you'll see what I mean.


	27. Firelight

**27. **

Night on the side of the golden stone temple is a delight, a wonder to behold and bask in.

They gather at the top and sit around a brazier beside the ever-flowing fountain. The lanterns John and Tara set free earlier have all made it safely up the channel and float upon its sparkling waters, turning the air around them golden.

Within the circle of light, hunters sit with their bows across their knees, watchful and mostly silent. Those with instruments play them, while others sing, or recite poems, or tell stories to music.

(Jo tries to imagine her family here. Her dad playing his piano, her mother telling the tales Jo remembers hearing from behind the Roadhouse's bar, or Ash with his laptop at his feet and handing out hangover-free PBR.

She smiles.)

Children huddle in groups or in the laps of adults, eyes full of laughing light, little faces round and baby-soft, awed and honest. Jo picks out Tara immediately. The almost-three-year-old has her thumb plugged into her mouth and watches the world from her father's arms with big green eyes.

When her mother introduces her to Jo, a smile shows on either side of her chubby fist and she wriggles over, tumbling puppy-warm into Jo's lap.

Two little hands grip her shirt as Tara gets comfortable, one smearing spit on the left sleeve. Jo can't bring herself to care; Tara Winchester's downy head rests against her shoulder. She can feel the toddler's breath against her neck, feel the delicate ribcage rising and sinking under the arms she wraps around the little girl. She smells like clean water and crushed flowers, like warm cotton and smeared chocolate.

Jo cuddles Tara close, and aches.

Across the circle of firelight, Harayel watches her sadly.


	28. Consortium

**28.  
**

The night passes on, and later, the children are taken away to sleep.

"We can sleep here?" Jo asks. But she has her answer; Tara dropped off hours ago, snuffling and whispering in her Crayola coloured dreams.

Mary smiles and touches her daughter's hair, stroking it back from the girl's forehead.

"Sort of," she says. "We can rest, which is nice, you know? Just to take a break from all the splendor. Plus, I think the kids find it comforting; something they remember doing before."

"They remember feeling better after sleeping, so they sleep," John adds.

"Gives the grown ups time to talk," Victor says, coming over and sitting with them. "And we've really got some talking to do."

Harayel and Saritiel join them too, along with Pam and some of the hunters Jo recognized earlier.

Jo gazes round at all the solemn faces and feels like she's sitting in on a council of war.

A young man takes a seat beside her. She notes the slightly oversized jacket, the Hendrix tee-shirt, the silver studs in one ear, as well as the rather adorkable face and faint odor of pot under that of incense and fresh coffee.

"Oh, hi," he says, on hand emerging from an overlong sleeve to shake hers, "I'm Andy."

"I'm Jo."

"I know," he says, with a somewhat dreamy smile…that drops a second later. "Because I'm psychic," he adds quickly. "I know because I'm psychic, and I saw you coming – oh God – not in a stalking kind of way, because that's wrong, and bad, and impossible here, I think, and –"

"Steady," Dan Elkins says, clapping the guy gently on the back.

Andy steadies.

"So," Pam says, once everyone has settled again. "Let's get down to business."

She looks around at them all, taking in each face.

Then she says, "Not that it's not amazing here and all, but how the fuck do we get out?"


	29. Follower

**29.  
**

"Emma?"

Nothing. She continues to stare straight out the front window, eyes glacial.

"Come on," Dean tries again. "You can't sit there sulking all night."

Emma is unmoved. If anything, the shoulder she's giving him from the other end of the Impala's front seat gets colder.

"Or maybe you can," he mutters. "Look, I said I was sorry. But, y'know, it really was a stressful time…"

"I don't doubt that it was," she says, finally turning to glower at him. "But that doesn't change the fact that _you threw away a god-finding amulet_."

Dean grumbles and focuses on driving. After a while he mutters, "It was more than that."

Emma sighs heavily, the stiffness falling from her shoulders. "I know," she says softly. "And I'm sorry I'm being such a bitch. But I gave up everything to get here. I left my life behind on the strength of a miracle and a bunch of weird dreams. I should be on the other side of the world, angsting in my apartment and waiting for my exam results."

Dean turns to look at her, briefly taking his eyes from the road. "What miracle?"

"My best friend had polycystic ovaries. She couldn't have kids and IVF hadn't worked. Then she got pregnant by accident. When she had her first ultrasound they said all the wounds the cysts caused were gone.

"I flew out of Melbourne two days later."

She turns to meet his gaze, eyes hollow. "If this all falls through, and we fail, I've given up my future for nothing."

Dean fights for something to say. He and Sam gave up their lives for this war a long time ago, and despite the disasters in River Pass and Blue Earth, he's at a loss as to how to comfort someone who's so very new to all this.

So, he tells her the truth.

"You're not alone in this, Emma, you know that right?"

"Yeah," she murmurs back. "But I'm not brave like you and Sam and your friends." She bit her lip. "We'll need to stop somewhere; I need to contact Amitiel and tell her what's happened."

"And how're you gonna do that? You got some kind of two-way Angel Radio deal going?"

She shakes her head. "No, I just need to sleep."

Dean casts her a quick look. "You need to dream. That's how you talk to her, right?"

"Yeah. Its how we first met. I dreamt of a lake where my family used to go on holidays and she was there with me."

The mention of family sends a shiver of guilt through Dean's bones.

"We'll stop soon. You're not the only one who's gotta make a call."


	30. Maplands

**AN:** I'm ba-ack...

* * *

**30.  
**

The map is the size of a table cloth and unrolls with a shower of soft, dust-fine sparks that wink and shimmer like thrown glitter. The landscape it reveals seems to move on the huge page; mountains with peaks that rise and fall, rivers that change course in the blink of an eye, deserts that roil like oceans and morph into lush jungles, woodlands that sink away and become dazzling seas.

"Heaven changes upon the whim of its occupants," Harayel explains. "We have done our best, but it is difficult to express in on a single surface." He sighs, the sound inherently musical. "It does not do it justice."

"Looks pretty good from where I'm sitting," Jo murmurs.

Harayel smiles, and the look is familiar. Reminds her of someone…

_Am I going to see you again?_

_Do you want to?_

_I wouldn't hate it…_

Jo looks down and away. Something in her chest hurts. It's a relief when Saritiel begins to talk.

"The best way for you to leave Amavasya is to keep going forward," he tells them, "Follow the Aletheia through the dreamscapes."

He traces the path of the river, a spool of unwound satin ribbon, from where it flows past the warm angles of the temple and back into the jungle. At its conclusion is a lake that gathers in a bowl made by snowcapped mountains.

"Beyond that are the Catacombs."

His fingers ghost over the mountains and touch upon a great swathe of ever-shifting hills and moors. They appear solid, only to peel open at random to show their bejeweled, passage-riddled insides.

"Those will guide you back up into the Elysium Fields. Once there, you can get back on course to the Choirs."

"You make it sound so simple," Pam says dryly.

The angel smiles. "It is not, and the way will be hard. But you will have help."

"Which is where we come in," John continues. "Caleb brought word back from our outriders when he went to get Isaac. An angel has been visiting the lake in order to talk with her vessel when she dreams. Kate managed to get the angel's attention once the girl dropped out of the dreamscape. Turns out we've got an ally."

Harayel nodded. "She is very old, is Amitiel. And very resourceful. An angel with many favours owed to her by many beings." His gaze finds Jo's again. "It was rumored she even had dealing with lesser gods, with those who valued their mortal worshipers instead of consuming them."

"Anubis," Jo breathes. "_Bones_."

"Yes."

"Do you know where he is? Does _anyone_ know where he is, if he's okay?"

Looks are exchanged. Uncertainty, sorrow, sympathy. Jo fears the worst.

"We do not know for sure," Saritiel says, with great care. "He is not in our realm anymore, but we think he may have fallen back to the Earthly Plain. With any luck Amitiel will know some way of contacting him."

Jo nods, feeling sick with worry for her surprising four-legged companion. "What happens when we get to the lake?"

"The outriders will meet you there, and explain what Amitiel told them. Whatever plan she has, she is…playing it close to the chest, is the term I believe."

"She's wise to," Dan Elkins put in. "We've had seraphim grazing the edges round here for days now. Either they suspect we're here or they're looking for somethin' specific."

"Me," Jo says softly. "There was one hunting Pam and I in the Veils. It was the shockwave from Anubis and Mathlai fighting that threw us into the Styx."

"Sounds about right," Victor murmurs. "Andy was picking up your vibe around about then."

Jo turns to the young psychic. "You did?"

He nods, hands clasped under overlong sleeves. "I kept getting, like, flashes, y'know? Blonde hair and black water, and stars and a crow calling, and at first I thought it was Lily, but she never fired a shotgun or met Dean Winchester. And when I figured your name out, John knew you and went looking. And here you are, which is totally cool, by the way."

Jo blinks at him, mouth twitching with a newborn smile. It's quite the ramble.

"Okay," she says. "Cool."

Pam chuckles. "Yeah, congrats Young Skywalker." She turns to Harayel. "When should we leave though? Now, tomorrow?"

It's Mary who answers. "Give it a day or two. The last traces of your scent'll be gone from around the dreamscape's boarders by then, and you'll have a clear path downriver. In the meantime…take a load off. Explore. Amavasya is more than just the temple."

Jo is intrigued. "Yeah?"

Mary's grin is bright in the firelight. "Yeah."


	31. Trembling

**AN:** A Happy Birthday present to myself...

**

* * *

31.  
**

Dawn comes like a sheet of watered silk laid slow and vivid over the world. That thick, physical sunlight covers everything, making the colours richer, so that the temple seems a great lantern lit from within, the big tropical blossoms that hang over its edges glow neon-bright and the surrounding jungle is a jewel-toned dream in varying shades of jade and peridot.

Jo drinks it in, soaks it up, basking so that she'll remember it for always and carry the memory forever in her skin.

She dances with Levayah, learns to pirouette upon the air and spin across the sky. She laughs, watching as the children fly across the water, their toes skipping across the surface like thrown stones. Gravity cannot hurt them here. They swim like seals, like darting sailfish because they don't need to breathe.

She and Mary and Olivia and Pam have a lazy lunch on the beach, watch the kids play and eat bread and honey with their fingers. Each flower here is edible, and Jo learns what lilac tastes like, and how magenta melts on the tongue, and delights in the burst of vermillion upon the roof of her mouth like fresh blood oranges.

She goes patrolling through the dense jungle with Harayel and the other hunters, and in a clearing under the satin-smooth sky the angel teaches her how to use a long bow. He holds her shoulders steady, braces her with his own frame to correct her stance and guides her arms as she steadies the bow.

She can feel his phantom breath against her neck, sense his grace just below the surface of his being, beating like a great multi-coloured heartbeat. His wings are warm, iridescent shadows just out of eyeshot, and close about them in an invisible bower…

She shivers, and misses Dean, and doesn't know whether to step forward or back.

The conflict burns like fire, and she feels Harayel sigh and step away.

They walk back in silence. Jo's heart feels like one big bruise, her hands pale and trembling. She holds Dean's face in her mind's eye, the green of his eyes and the curl of his mouth. She remembers the feel of that mouth on hers, even as she lay dying, clasps the memory close…and she can almost make out the glitter of her own soul; the net of stars that covers her and draws her forever earthward.

Harayel looks back at her, sorrow marking his features as they approach the temple.

_They can feel_, she thinks.

Jo looks away, shivers again. She hugs herself and goes to sit with Andy and Saritiel as they strum their guitars.

_Miss you_, she thinks.

* * *

On earth, Dean pauses as his chest tightens briefly and his eyes are drawn skyward. The stars wink back at him, and he thinks of flashing dark eyes and a tumble of bright hair.

_Miss you…_

**

* * *

AN2:** Oooh...angst..._  
_


	32. Nightsong

**32. **

They set out the morning, before the sun has risen and the air is still cool with nighttime. The stars linger, arching slowly overhead, and torches burn in lines of gold down the temples steps.

So many have woken to see them off, and Jo finds herself on the verge of tears, saying goodbye again to all these familiar faces. Tara clings to her and buries her little face against Jo's shoulder. Jo clings back and whispers lullabies to her.

"You come back," Tara says, voice wet with tears.

"I'll come back," Jo agrees, and knows she will. When her time truly comes, it will be to this region of heaven that her heart will carry her, though she'll find a way to get Ash and her parents to make the journey with her.

She hands Tara back to Mary, meeting the elder woman's eyes. Mary takes her hand. "Tell them I remember," she requests. "Tell them I love them."

Jo nods and climbs into John's boat with Pam. It's a rowboat no longer. A sail has been rigged at the prow and John stands at the aft with his hand upon the long tiller. Harayel is a dark, watchful shape standing just out of sight beyond the sail, but Jo can feel his gaze nevertheless. She leans into Pam, and wishes Bones were here.

They cast off, drifting away from the pale sands of the shore, the boat's sail filling with a breeze no one feels. Jo sees Mary and Olivia lift their cupped hands and blow across them. Fireflies spring from their fingers, each one singing with a single note from Olivia's harp. The swarm skims across the dark water toward them, alighting on the boat's sides and sail, upon Harayel's shoulders, on the tiller in John's hands and in Jo and Pam's hair.

As they drift farther and farther away, Olivia lifts up her voice and the song ripples out across the river towards them…

"Oṃ bhūr bhuvaḥ svaḥ  
Tat savitur vareṇyaṃ  
Bhargo devasya dhīmahi  
dhiyo yo naḥ pracodayāt…"

Others join her, swelling the low chorus. At the prow of the ship Harayel begins to sing too, Pam adds her own smooth alto, and John his graveled baritone.

Jo knows the words now, and her soprano twins with Olivia's as they move downriver with only the stars and the humming fireflies to guide them in the breathing dark.

"Oh earth, atmosphere, heaven:  
May we attain that excellent glory  
Of Savitir the God:  
So may he stimulate our prayers…"

Though they round a bend in the river, and the temple is out of sight, the song follows them, follows them until there is no light but that given by the stars and the fireflies, and Jo can hardly see through her tears.

Only then does it fade, and slowly slip away.


	33. Lesson

**33.**

Jo wakes with her head on Pam's shoulder and sunlight once again covering the world around them.

The dreamscape is alive, rich and layered, just as it has always been; there are fish jumping beside the boat, huge multi-coloured creatures with wing-like fins and jewel-bright scales. A group of animals run parallel to them along the western shore. Horses, Jo thinks, until she sees the shining horns that spiral from their foreheads.

"Unicorns," she mutters, half-laughing, "Dean would shit a brick."

There is a cry from overhead.

"Look alive," John says, and tacks the boat to starboard. "Here they are."

Several shadows follow their movements, great winged shapes that caw in awesome bass-and-gravel voices.

"They're crows," Jo breathes, and Andy's words come back to her.

_Blonde hair and black water, and stars and a __**crow calling**__…_

"Are they here for us?" she asks Pam.

"They're here for you," Harayel says.

Jo stares at him. "What…why?"

He grins. "Can you hear that?"

At first she doesn't understand…and then she does, she hears it; the roar of falling water.

"Is that…is that a waterfall?"

"It is."

She begins to be afraid. "Harayel, what's going on?"

He climbs down from the prow and sits opposite her in the boat, their knees almost touching. "You're going back to earth, Jo. You've always known that would be the result of this journey. But you can't get back there with a regular resurrection."

"There's such a thing as a regular resurrection?" Jo says, smiling feebly.

Harayel smiles and takes her numb hands in his. "In order to get down there, Jo, there are things you need to learn."

"Like?"

"Like how to fly."

Jo feels the blood drain from her face.

"What?" she breathes. "When…"

"Now," calls John.

And the boat begins to tip over the edge of the falls.

The last thing Jo hears before the roar of the water fills her ears is the calling of the crows as they circle overhead…


	34. Blinding

**34.**

They hole up in a motel which seems to have taken 'themed rooms' to whole new level. Dean doesn't think he's ever seen so much leather and lace and – _holy fuck_ – red satin since he took Cas to that brothel.

He sighs and dumps his stuff on one of the beds (and it just kills him that Sam isn't on the other side of the room doing the same), then realizes the door's still open.

He turns and sees Emma standing there, staring with abject disgust at her surroundings.

"I think there's been a mistake," she says.

"It was all they had."

She looks pained, but steps inside and shuts the door. He watches as she carefully puts her bag down at the foot of the other bed and sits down.

"How the hell am I supposed to sleep in this?"

Dean raises one eyebrow. "With your eyes closed?"

She casts him a look and sighs. "It doesn't matter, I guess." She sits forward and pulls a small pouch out of her bag. "If I'm going to do this quickly I'm going to need some help anyhow…"

Dean gets a niggling feeling that he knows well. "Help? As in sleeping pills?"

Emma shakes her head. "They do the wrong thing; go through the wrong parts of the brain. You can't dream with pills." She opens the pouch. "You can with this, though."

She carefully shakes what looks like a dried up plant into her palm.

"What is that?" Dean asks, stepping closer.

"_Silene Capenesis_."

He frowns. The name seems like something from a lifetime ago, but he remembers. He recognizes the plant too; the pale, loose starburst of each flower, the oval leaves, the _smell_…

"African Dream Root," he says. "You sure you know what you're doing?"

Emma nods. "Relax; I'm not about to power-trip out and go on a rampage or anything." She turns one of the flowers meditatively in her fingers.

Dean takes a seat on his bed, still frowning. "This gets you an audience with the heavenly postal worker?"

She smiles. "Yeah. If you brew it with holy water," she tells him, "it gets you into the dreamscapes." She looks up at him, eyes the clear green of deep water. "Hold the name of an angel in your mind as you fall asleep, and they can find you there."

"The dreamscapes?"

"Sometimes people touch the lower reaches of heaven as they sleep. The dreamscapes are where they end up."

He remembers the times he dreamed with Cas, the lake where he'd been fishing…Emma mentioned a lake, hadn't she?

"I think I've been there," he murmurs.

She looks up. "Yeah?"

Dean nods. "There was a lake where I was too."

Emma smiles again. "Might've been the same one, you know."

He raised his eyebrows at her. "How d'ya figure?"

She shrugs. "Heaven's what you make it. To me it was Lake Wakatipu, to you…" she gestures at him, clearly expecting a name.

He rubs the back of his neck. "Hell, I don't know. It was just a big puddle with imaginary fish in it and some peace and quiet…"

Maybe it's this conversation that does it, or maybe it's the fumes from Emma's nasty dream tea…or maybe its just kismet, but tonight, Dean will dream…

_

* * *

Seems that I have been held, in some dreaming state_

* * *

She plunges downwards, water roaring beside her, the spray spattering her in icy needles and blurring her tearing eyes. She gasps, or tries to; she's falling so fast, _so fast_

…

_

* * *

A tourist in the waking world, never quite awake_

* * *

Dean twitches where he lies. He has only discarded his shoes, intending just to catch a few zee's before calling Sam, but the past two days has taken its toll, and sleep has caught him unawares.

He twitches again, hand curling against the rough motel sheets.

_

* * *

No kiss, no gentle word could wake me from this slumber_

* * *

Jo thrashes as she falls, spinning over and over. The gigantic crows circle her, calling over and over in their shredded-air voices and she sobs helplessly.

Then Harayel is there, falling beside her.

"Spread your wings, Jo."

"What?"

He meets her terrified gaze unflinchingly. "Spread your wings."

_

* * *

Until I realize that it was you who held me under_

* * *

Dean's breath rasps. He says a name as he sleeps, dreaming of tangled blonde hair, of roaring water and rushing air…

_

* * *

Felt it in my fists, in my feet, in the hollows of my eyelids_

* * *

"What wings?" Jo demands of the angel.

His face hardens. "Heaven is what you make it, Jo. You think you need wings to fly…so grow a pair!"

She begins to get angry.

Harayel grins.

_

* * *

Shaking through my skull, through my spine and down through my ribs_

* * *

Dean stills, for a split second lying as though dead…then his spine bows upwards, shoulders flexing. He dreams of dark shapes spinning in a clear morning sky, of calling birds and –

_

* * *

No more dreaming of the dead as if death itself was undone_

* * *

She gives a shriek and spins through the air.

_I'll see you on the other side._

The net of stars shines hot around her.

_Probably sooner than later._

It expands, bright, biting points of light flung wide…

She sees his face in her mind's eye. Green eyes. The curl of his mouth.

She can map the striations of colour in those eyes and knows every freckle across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose.

She knows how it feels to kiss that mouth.

The shadows between the stars solidify, become velvet-dark and touchable.

_

* * *

No more calling like a crow for a boy, for a body in the garden_

_

* * *

Make it later._

He dreams of that last kiss, and then he dreams of kisses that never happened and the touch of feathers across his skin…across his hands and arms, his throat and shoulders and brushing his lips.

He sees crows wheeling in a brilliant morning sky. One has a feather missing from its left wing.

_

* * *

No more dreaming like a girl so in love, so in love_

* * *

When she spins through the wet and sparkling air again, she is not a girl but a crow.

One long primary feather in her left wing is the pale gold of her hair, the colour so light and fine that it cannot be seen in the amber sunlight. It looks as though the quill is missing.

She swoops above the crashing water with the angel by her side and the little boat bobbing safely at the bottom of the falls…

_

* * *

No more dreaming like a girl so in love with the wrong world_

* * *

…and Dean wakes on the inhale with her laughter in his ears and the memory of her mouth against his, his fingers closing on the single dark feather in his left hand.

**

* * *

AN:** Lyrics are "Blinding" by the indescribable Florence + the Machine, which you will realize, if you listen to the whole thing, is the perfect song for this fic.


	35. Mist

**AN:** Sorry its been a while. RL is getting a little hectic. Who am I kidding? Its frigging out-of-this-world hectic...

**

* * *

35.**

She comes down in a hail of feather and laughter, transforming just above the boat's bottom and nearly stumbling as her feet hit the decking. Pam catches her, laughing too.

"Knew you could," the psychic tells her, smiling a whiskey-warm smile. Her laugh was like hot chocolate down Jo's limbs and shoulders. "Oh, you brilliant girl."

Jo grins, still buzzing and wondering if there are feathers in her hair, and hugs Pam back.

"That was…that was…" She doesn't have the words. Pam just laughs again.

Harayel lands silently beside John where the hunter sits with one hand on the tiller. The angel smiles. "We're here."

Jo tries to breathe normally and looks around. "Where's here?"

"The Lake."

Jo can see the banks on either side of them through the mist that drifts across the clear water. The trees upon the distant shores are long limbed oaks and weeping willows, Morton bay figs with their tall aerial roots and chestnuts clothed in many-pointed leaves, all with gnarled sides and beards of hanging Spanish moss. Some wear wisteria hung with drifts of summer-sky blossoms.

The breeze that dances across the water to them carries the scent of the trees, of the wet stone and damp earth. Jo breathes it in, and when she sighs out her breath emerges as a spray of soft white sparks from her lips.

"There's something special about this place," she whispers, and Pam nods.

"I can feel it too."

"This is where the dreamscape meets the rest of Heaven," Harayel tells them. "From here we must find a safe place to moor the boat and contact the outriders. John, you will be able to guide us to anchorage?"

John nods. "Easily. You're forgetting I've been here before."

It doesn't take long to get to the shore, John mooring the boat in a small bay of rough grey sand and stones that crunch underfoot.

"This thing is bigger than I remember," Jo grunts as all four of them haul the boat up onto the beach.

"You're not wrong," John tells her. "They shrink or expand depending how big we need 'em. Caleb once had his as a big old paddle steamer."

As John ties down the sail and checks the rigging, Jo steps away, exploring the beach. A small path, scattered with flat grey pebbles appears to wind around the western edge of the Lake. She follows glimpses of it with her eyes and sees that it leads to a wood jetty. The jetty stretches a short way out over the water.

Jo squints, trying to see through the drifting mist. Either her eyes are playing tricks on her or there's someone sitting at the end of it…

The breeze clears the mist, pulling it back like a veil.

Jo's breath catches in her throat.

The man at the end of jetty…

"Dean."


	36. Sam

**36.**

He gets Sam's voicemail the first time. He tries Cas next, but gets an out-of-service message. He's about to try Sam again when his phone buzzes in his hand and his brother's name flashes on the screen.

Dean casts a look at Emma, still curled on her bed, before getting to his feet and stepping out of the room, leaving the door ajar so that he can talk and keep an eye on her.

He hits 'answer' and holds the phone a little way from his ear.

Sure enough: "DEAN, WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?"

Dean winces. "Uh, hi, Sam."

"'Hi, Sam'? You disappear for a week, leave me in a town full of disillusioned religious nut-jobs with an angel making inroads into alcoholism and that's all you have to say to me? 'Hi, Sam'?"

"Uh, no? I mean, I'm sorry."

Sam scoffs, and Dean knows he's pacing and pulling his hair right now, probably at Bobby's or in another dingy motel room somewhere across the country.

"I can't believe you did this," his brother says. "I just can't, Dean. I mean I know…I know it's hard, right now. That what we saw and what Joshua told us was…"

"I know." Dean's voice is low and rough. "And it is hard. God, Sam it's just… This is so fucked up. I was going to do it. I was. I was gonna stand on a fucking rooftop somewhere and scream yes at Michael and let it all burn."

He can hear Sam breathing down the line. "Why didn't you?"

Dean rests his forehead against his closed fist. "I…I met someone. Someone I didn't expect. Stopped to fill up outside of Cicero and this girl comes up to me…"

He tells Sam about Emma, about Amitiel and the help that's coming. Or supposed to be anyway.

"Emma said it's all up in the air until she finishes explaining to Amitiel that I…" He cringes.

"That you threw the medallion away," Sam finishes flatly.

"…yeah."

There's a fraught pause. Dean's afraid Sam will hang up on him.

"It's not lost, you know," Sam says, voice low.

"What?"

"It's not lost. After you left the room I got it out of the trashcan and kept it."

Dean's relief almost takes him to his knees. "Shit, Sam, I'm sorry, I really am. It was stupid thing to do."

"Yeah, and it was fucking hurtful." Sam sighs roughly. "But I'm going to forgive you, 'cause it feels good to take the moral high ground."

"Smug bastard," Dean mutters.

Sam laughs. "Yeah, well. Any opportunity, right? Look, I'm at Bobby's with Cas. We'll wait for you here."

"Hey, Sam, how is Cas?"

"About as good as the last time you saw him."

"He go on another bender?" The idea freaks Dean out. It echoes far too closely to that other future he saw, that other Cas who drowned himself in sex, drugs and sixties Zen guitar sessions.

"Drank Bobby's stash dry. Old man's really pissed about the Glenfiddich."

"Who wouldn't be?"

"Yeah, but when I say pissed, I mean _really_ pissed. I thought he was going to spontaneously re-grow every nerve below the waist and kick Cas until he bled rainbows or something."

"Ah."

"Hey, Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm glad you called."

"Yeah, well, someone's gotta keep you from morphing into a giant sasquatch-girl and terrorizing villagers."

"Jerk."

"Bitch."

Sam scoffs. "Get some sleep already; you've got a long drive tomorrow."

Dean opens his fist and twirls the feather there between his fingers. The softness near the base of the quill is like velvet, or raw silk, light and insubstantial while its upper is a smooth curve of dark oil-slick rainbows, blue and green and indigo peeling across its surface.

When he brushes his face with it, he can feel her kiss against his mouth.

"Yeah," he murmurs. "Yeah, I'll do that."

When he dreams again it will be of the jetty where he fishes, only the light will be blue instead of gold, and in the distance he will hear Jo's voice calling his name.


	37. Dreamers

AN: Don't be mad. Remember how I have to make a living and pass university? Yeah, still happening. But at some point, I will keep working on this...

**

* * *

37.**

She's running before she can think. There is only the pounding of her feet against the pebbled path, the sound of her breath in her throat. She runs effortlessly, hair streaming behind her in a banner of pale gold.

"Dean!"

She sees him turn in his seat, looking around.

"_Dean_!"

She sees the moment he spots her, standing and sprinting down the jetty with such force that the chair goes over, hitting the boards with a loud _clack_ that shatters the calm of the blue air. She makes a sound of desperate happiness as she runs, seeing him getting closer…

Then he's facing her down the path. Both of them skid to a halt, stilling for a moment and drinking in the sight of each other.

He breathes her name, she can _taste_ it… He looks just like she remembers, maybe a little darker around the eyes, some of the hope washed away, but it filters back as he stands there gazing at her, his face almost hungry.

And she _wants_ him. Wants his eyes and hands and lips and the sound of his voice in her ears, against her skin. She wants his heart and his fears, wants that shoddy pick-up line he tried on her last night, wants his laughter, the shape of his smile and the way he looked at her and _saw_ her.

But then there's _fear_ in his face and he's running towards her. She feels a trickle of awareness up her spine and takes off too, waiting for the sweet collision when they'll hit each other, the feel of him…

Dean roars, "JO!" just as something grabs her waist and hauls her back. She screams and tries to struggle free, but the arms gripping her are as immovable as steel.

"Dean!" She screams again, trashes hard, reaching for him. "DEAN!"

He gets so close.

His fingertips almost graze hers. She feels the change in air pressure, the heat of his skin…

And then he's gone, as though he were never there at all.

Jo collapses in Harayel's arms, sobbing and raging. She shoves the angel away, betrayal written on her tear-streaked face. Seconds later she is in the sky, leaving a trail of black feathers in her wake.

* * *

Dean comes to with a start, sitting bolt upright and striking out with one hand while the other clutches the single feather in his palm.

The blow sends Emma across the room, fetching up against the wall with a small sound of pain.

Dean can't bring himself to feel sorry for her.

"You BITCH!" he rages. "What the hell was that!"

With a shaking hand, Emma pushes her dark hair out of her face and Dean gets up off his bed and takes a swift step back from her.

Though they're fading, he can still make out the Enochian patterns glowing on her skin, flowing over her brow, under her eyes and down her throat. As he watches, the light sinks slowly away, leaving her tired and tear-stained.

"If you'd have touched her," she whispered, "you never would have left there."

"What the fuck are talking about?" he demands.

"Any dreamer who touches a dead soul in the dreamscape doesn't come back. It binds you there. Your body would be in a coma for the rest of its natural life." A new wave of tears made its way down her cheeks, blurring the light that still seeped from her skin. "Dean, I couldn't let that happen. I _couldn't_!"

"Why not?" he breathes. "_Why not_, Emma? I might've been trapped but I would have been with her."

She shakes her head. "She's on her own path. And even if she'd stayed with you, and you with her, for all the time your body was alive…what do you think would have happened when it had died? You would have been thrown into your own Heaven. And where she is…there's no guarantee you would have ever found her again."

Dean swallows hard, feeling sick. "And now I'll never see her again anyway."

Emma leans her head against the wall, looking drained.

"That's not necessarily true," she murmurs, and Dean's heart finds its way into his throat.

"What do you mean?"

She holds his gaze, and in the strange light cast by the fading patterns on her face, they flare the color of crow wings.

"Remember the help I said was coming…"


	38. Reunion

AN: Life relented for five minutes, and in that time I managed to write this. Phew.

**

* * *

38.  
**

The ride up to Bobby's is awkward. Neither of them have had as much sleep as they want – or need – and Dean feels guilty as hell for throwing Emma into that wall. It's made worse by the fact that she just looks so terribly ragged, with bruise-shadows forming under her eyes and her dark hair hanging in stringy hanks about her face. Sometimes she'll wince, and those crazy sigils will show up on her skin again in small bursts, like ink blooming across the surface of water.

"Emma?" he tries, reminded of the first journey they'd made to the motel. "I'm sorry. Y'know, about hitting you…you know that, right?"

"You were upset," she says softly, looking ahead. "Its okay, Dean."

It's really not. It's really, _really_ not.

When they finally roll up to Singer's Salvage Yard Dean takes Emma's bag before she can grab it and carries it in for her. She offers him a small smile and follows him, still looking like she's been in a bar fight and is going to drop at any moment.

Dean lets them in with his key and the moment they get in the door…there's something akin to an explosion. All of a sudden, Cas is up in his personal space, and the dude looks pissed.

_Shit._

"Cas, man, I'm sorry –" All he seems to be doing today is apologizing…

"Sorry!" Cas snarls, smelling like…like peach schnapps for crying out loud. Where the hell did he get peach schnapps? "You're sorry, are you? And to think, I fell for this? For you to say YES? For you to **RUN AWAY**!"

The windows shake threateningly in their frames and the next thing Dean knows, he's being thrown across Bobby's library, through the kitchen and into the cabinets above the sink. Fuck, Cas might have fallen but he's still got some of his angel mojo lurking inside that holy tax accountant skin. That. Hurt.

Cas is advancing on him, and Dean can hear Sam and Bobby shouting from somewhere deeper in the house, can see Emma standing in the library's doorway white as a sheet.

Then Cas is on him – "For this?" he snarls again – and gets off one good punch that has all thirty-two of Dean's teeth rattling in his skull before Emma says something that freezes the angel's fist before it impacts Dean's face for a second time.

He turns to her, noticing her for the first time, Dean thinks hazily, and rasps, "What did you say?"

Emma gathers herself – little hitching breaths – and repeats, "Amitiel sends her regards."

"You know her?" Cas demands. "You've spoken to her?"

"I'm her vessel," Emma says faintly, as though that explains everything.

It seems to for Cas evidently, because he drops Dean and stalks towards the girl. Dean sees that Sam is just behind her in the doorway and there must be some awful kind of expression on Cas's face because Sam immediately slides forward and puts himself between Emma and the fallen angel. His brother's huge hands come to rest on Cas's slight shoulders.

"Hey, Cas, whoa," Sam says, all caution. "What the hell is going on, man?"

"The girl's a vessel." Cas's voice has gone flat. "She is the body of one of the most powerful angels in Creation. One of the oldest. The Receiver of Prayer."

Dean staggers to his feet and makes his way over to the others. "Sammy, meet Emma. Emma, this is my brother Sam. Bobby's the dude in the wheelchair…he's around here somewhere." He takes his life in his hands and puts a hand on Cas's shoulder, next to Sam's.

"Cas, look, just listen, okay? I am sorry. I was going to say yes –" the angel flinches – "but I'm not anymore. I know that's not how we're going to win. It's not how we fix things. Emma's in contact with Amitiel and she says…she says there's help coming."

Dean can't help but smile.

"She says we're getting Jo back."

* * *

**AN2:** I'm a piñata; hit me with a stick. Go on, I know you want to.


End file.
